Tonight in our series ‘The Miraculous & The Mundane’, we looked at the miracle of the conversion of Saul (Acts 9:1-19). Saul was the least likely person to become a Christian; he was a Pharisee, a religious Jew who believed that Christians were totally wrong and worthy of persecution and who had approved of the stoning of Stephen as the first Christian martyr. (Phil 3:5-6, Acts 8:1-3) Yet God stepped into his life miraculously as he was travelling to Damascus to find yet more believers he could persecute, arresting him en route with a bright light and a voice from heaven and leaving him temporarily blinded by this experience.
God is able to step into the lives of ordinary people and completely turn them around; to be born again or converted means a radical U-turn on the way we used to live. Yet at the same time, he graciously involves us, ordinary believers, in this process of salvation which is all of Him (there is nothing we can do to save ourselves as Romans 3:23, Eph 2:8-9, Rev 7:10 testify.) Ananias was the one chosen by God to go and welcome Saul into the family of God and send him forth with a mission to testify to the Gentiles. Not surprisingly, he was not initially keen to follow these instructions, since Paul’s reputation had preceded him! But in humble obedience, he went and prayed for Saul, and from this moment, the scales fell from Saul’s eyes and he could see again. God used his faith and obedience to do something miraculous for Saul, to restore his sight and to confirm him in his faith. Again, God could have just restored his sight without any human intervention, but he chose to work with and through another person. He has good works for us to do to bring about the miraculous in the lives of those who need God! (Eph 2:10)
God’s purposes cannot be thwarted. (Job 42:2) When facing the threat of persecution and extinction, the church did not reckon with God’s plan to turn around the worst persecutor to become a follower of Jesus! We can say confidently that God pursues people, longing for them to know the truth. He does not want anyone to perish but wants everyone to come to repentance. (2 Pet 3:9) His heart is for us; He wants people everywhere to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim 2:4) We can be sure that every time someone accepts Christ as their Saviour, it is as a result of the miraculous intervention of God and we can also ask God to involve us in the wonderful work of evangelism which results in conversions as we accept our role as co-workers with Him.
